Generating ideas and responding to research funding opportunities

Apart from creative thinking and knowledge of prior-art in your field, which you gain by engaging with your peers, attending and presenting at conferences and joining academic networks, the engagement with non-academic stakeholders is important in a research environment that looks to research for providing solutions to societal, cultural and economic challenges.  

Understanding the funding landscape for your area of research is essential to be able to apply to the right funder at the right time.  

Ask yourself:  

• Who funds your peers?
• Who would benefit from your research?
• Would industry fund your research?
• Do you need to start by engaging with stakeholders and could you do this by providing consultancy?
• Which funders for your area of research are available and would fund the type of project you would like to undertake?

Understanding the funding landscape

The Research Development Team in RIS maintains close contacts with the main research funders, particularly the EU, UKRI and the major charity funders. Look out for funder visits advertised as part of the DIIF programme , see updates in the RIS Newsletter or arrange a personal funding planning meeting with a member of the Research Development Team

Virtually Writing it Right grant writing workshops

These workshops aim to give early career researchers and those new to writing grants essential background and top tips on how to make a successful application for research funding. Each workshop is split between two sessions on consecutive days to allow participants to contribute their own ideas.

Workshops will be held three times a year.

Here are the recordings from our April 2022 workshop: Session one and Session two (these open in Microsoft Stream).

Dates for the next workshops coming soon.

Please contact Emma Warbrick with any enquiries

Talent and Development provides training, such as how to navigate the funding landscape in collaboration with RIS.

• Talent and Development 

Developing your individual funding plan

If you are an Early Career Researcher, new to Dundee, new to research funding or moving your research into a new direction and making a fresh start with research funding, a meeting with a member of the Research Development Team in RIS can help you plan which funders and schemes to go for and when.

Identifying funding opportunities and receiving regular call information

Pivot-RP Funding Opportunities Database

The University now subscribes to Pivot-RP (previously known as Research Professional), which is a comprehensive online database of research funding opportunities from UK, European and International funders across all disciplines.

This new service unifies the Pivot® and Research Professional funding solutions. These services will soon be available on one website, but for the moment funding call information is available through Pivot-RP and all other information is available through Research Professional. Research Professional can be accessed using your University credentials. Although this will be available for Pivot-RP in the near future, users must currently sign up with a University email address (click ‘create account’ on the Pivot RP website).

Pivot-RP provides an extensive collection of training documents, and collections of training videos are available on the Pivot-RP YouTube website.

Pivot-RP gives access to tens of thousands of funding opportunities a single, editorially curated database. The database covers a wide variety of funding types, and includes national and international funders. Funding opportunity recommendations can be tailored to your unique profile, and opportunities of interest tracked to generate alerts on deadlines and other significant changes.

Research Professional contains a wealth of informative and helpful information, including research funding and policy news. The Know How section provides articles on topics such as the essential components of funding success (including advice from successful applicants), advice for Early Careers Researchers, impact and dissemination, working internationally, and UK publicly funded agencies and policymakers.

Any queries should be directed to Emma Warbrick.

Identifying collaborators and stakeholders to build project teams

RIS supports you with industry engagement and project planning with industry and other stakeholder involvement. Learn more:

• Working with industry

To raise the profile of your research and build collaborations with academic colleagues or external stakeholders, why not propose a DIIF workshop or participate in the programme of events.

• Dundee Interdisciplinary and Innovation Forum (DIIF)